New Vilans chair at TIAS

On 15 February, Dr. Mirella Minkman will take up her appointment as distinguished professor at TIAS in the new chair in Innovation in Organisation and Management of Long-Term Integrated Care. The chair is the result of close collaboration between TIAS and Vilans, Centre of expertise for long-term care.

The chair has been established by Vilans and will be located within the GovernanceLAB: an open platform in which TIAS scientists work together with practitioners on research, the development of knowledge and its application in the field of governance.

With the chair, TIAS School for Business and Society hopes to respond to social issues arising from developments in long-term care. The business school believes that structural attention to and specific expertise in the field of organisation and administration in this sector require a scientific approach to knowledge development. TIAS and Vilans will therefore work together to seek innovative and pragmatic answers that will have an impact on organisations, business and society, now and in the future. The chair will bridge the gap between scientific theory, empirical research, education, innovation and practice.

Minkman has the necessary extensive experience in the field of health care organisation, collaboration issues and change processes.  She explains which challenges underscore the importance of the chair. “Care and our vision of care are shifting enormously. To adjust to this shift, it is necessary to adjust the focus of care governance.  It is a task that requires innovation, because we have an existing system of roles, relationships, administrative bodies and care providers, and it is difficult to break away from that system and its underlying basic principles. They act in accordance with today’s requirements and regulations, which are modelled on yesterday’s reality. The challenge is to meet the current changes in such a way that we, also in governance, can be responsive to the reality of the client, or – better – the citizens of the future. That will certainly not become simpler. Our society is becoming more and more complex, after all. There has to come a turning point at which everyone, from municipalities to health professionals, dares to put the needs of the client first.”
Minkman will combine her professorship with her work as Program Leader of Innovation and Research at Vilans.

About Vilans
As a centre of expertise, Vilans develops innovative, practice-focused and well-founded answers to issues arising in the care sector and in society. The knowledge that is developed here is made available to all stakeholders in long-term care (elder care, disability services and care for the chronically ill). In this, Vilans works together with nurses and carers, general practitioners and specialists, administrators, policy-makers, management and client/patient organisations, other centres of expertise and research institutes and national stakeholders. Vilans’ mission is ‘to take care that care works better’. Clients in long-term care are the source of motivation for Vilans to strive to help them lead the life that they want to as far as possible, despite long-term illness or disability.

About Mirella Minkman
Mirella Minkman studied nursing at the HAN University of Applied Sciences, followed by Health Sciences at Maastricht University. In 2012 she obtained her PhD from Erasmus University with research in the integrated chain of care field, for which she won the EHMA/Karolinska Research award. Before becoming Program Leader of Innovation and Research at Vilans, Minkman worked as Program Leader in Elder Care at Vilans, led large scale implementation programs such as Zorg voor Beter and the National Dementia Program, and worked for the Dutch Institute for Healthcare Improvement CBO and in the Radboud University Medical Center. Alongside her position at Vilans, she is a supervisor at the Inovum Foundation and Board Editor for the International Journal for Integrated Care, among other things. Minkman is author and co-author of seven books in the field of health care and has publications in a range of professional literature, including internationally.